October 26, 2021
Why Your Brand Story Matters
“This feels more like therapy than a business meeting.”
It’s when we know the conversation is headed in the right direction.
And it’s usually in the middle of a conversation peppered with questions like:
“What do you want people to say about your business?”
“When is your business most valuable to others?”
“Can you give us an example of how your business has transformed someone else’s life?”
Because underneath the balance sheets and the staffing and the processes, lies the why.
And the why is what makes the whole thing go.
Like gasoline in a car, electricity in a home, or caffeine (admittedly, too much from a lot of us) in our team members – there’s a source of fuel behind good things.
The source of fuel behind every organization that is working to change the world and become a signal in the noise, starts with their why.
We often get the honor of sitting across the table from someone who brings back to the surface their organization’s why. They peek behind the calendar holds and pings and emails and circle backs and quick calls, and they remember.
They take a deep breath and say something like, “I don’t know why I never make time for this, this is important.”
For us, that’s where it takes off. That’s where the story surfaces. It’s when our fingers are typing as fast as possible, pens are writing as fast as they can and remain legible.
Finding clarity in your organization’s story also points very clearly and intentionally to the answer to the equally important question: Who?
Whose life are you changing? How is someone made better because of an interaction with your organization? What pain do you solve?
Your brand story isn’t just a 400 beautifully worded piece of copy.
It’s the result of a lot of hard work uncovering and clarifying and remembering. It’s the result of getting honest about where you’re headed and who you’re serving. It’s how to inspire those inside your organization, and to clearly invite others into what you’re doing.
There are versions of this exercise in the marketing business: elevator pitches and boilerplate copy, to name a couple. And it makes sense that there’s a few ways to attack it, because getting at the guts of all this is really what propels all your other marketing efforts.
The clarity on who you’re serving and why you’re serving them and how to articulate that in a way that makes sense to the people that need to hear it most – that’s the fuel.
And we call it a story. Because stories help us make sense of what’s around us, connect with people, and they help us change the world.
Most of the time, it just takes a little business therapy to get there.
